About Us

Meet the team

We are business expansion specialists building the big brands of tomorrow.

You’re likely here because you are a proactive business owner looking to take your next big leap with confidence. Welcome. The Brand Architect are a group of marketing specialists who are committed to building the big brands of tomorrow. Dedicated to becoming Australia’s best loved plugin marketing partner, we help businesses who are scaling up or who need additional marketing resource & business revenue. Our clients get access to a full team of professionals with multiple skill sets without the overheads and without the hassle of juggling multiple consultants & agencies. We bring strategic brand thinking to teams who are stuck, stretched or in need of flexibility.

A team of corporate escapees, we’ve owned a business (or four) of our own. We blend big business marketing experience with small business agility. And because we’ve worked client side building brands end-to-end, we can tell our P&L’s from our balance sheets & our trade & export plans from our experiential.

Grounded in the values of simplicity & service, it is our fundamental belief that marketing is nothing more or less than a conversation with people who you can help. We work alongside business owners to create a roadmap for steady growth, fuelled by genuine connection with your ideal customer & an authentic point of difference vs your competition. We help to clear through the clutter, create structure & step-change business performance.

The team is selected based on intelligence, inappropriate sense of humour & commitment to excellence. We’ve never worked with anyone who doesn’t appreciate every single client & empathise with the hopeful, terrifying & exhilarating journey they are on & we never will.

We work flexibly across time zones & will always buy you a G&T when you’re in Sydney.

Big & Small Brand Experience

We have decades of experience building businesses large and small

Big Picture Thinking

For when you can’t see the forest for the trees, we step back and take a fresh, objective view of your whole business and look for opportunities for growth.

End-to-End Business Experience

We’ve built businesses, brands & products end-to-end across the globe. So we can take a birds eye view of your entire business and identify the opportunities you don’t even know you have.

I cannot speak highly enough of The Brand Architect's amazing work and her passion for what they do! One of my biggest struggles moving forward has been defining my business and my brand, including my target audience and point of difference. The Brand Architect was able to work through these issues with me with easy to understand explanations and examples and gave me a lot of great information and advice. I am now a lot more confident in my brand's direction.

Emma Anne

My House Needs

Our brand manifesto

At our core

We believe that marketing is no more or less complicated than a conversation.We believe that nothing unlocks big picture thinking like turning off your phone, getting out the coloured textas and having a laugh with grown ups who know their stuff. We believe in quality over quantity, though we disagree with the degree to which this applies to wine (but not gin).

We believe that all good business practice begins with an attitude of service. We believe that the best messages are communicated via satire, sarcasm, and snark. We believe in regular humility, occasional gratitude, and lifelong learning. We believe that growing businesses have nothing to fear from big corporates who conduct consumer research behind glass. We believe in workplace diversity, equal access to opportunity and in solemnly voting for the political party you hate the least. And we believe that everyone has an interesting story to tell.

Our people

Meet the team.

Owner & Managing Director

Kristy Chilman

Kristy Chilman is a Strategic Marketer and lead-generating machine. With fifteen years marketing experience – ten of those leading strategy and marketing divisions – Kristy has worked with big name brands in Australia and globally across Europe, the UK, and the Middle East.

An innovative and visual thinker, Kristy loves a challenge; especially one that allows her to flex her creative muscles in the pursuit of thoroughly commercial marketing solutions that help brands grow. Her agile, lightning-fast thinking and tenaciousproblem-solving skills, along with her knack for identifying a brand’s tone of voice, means that she makes building personality filled brands that customers are lining up round the block to buy (literally) look easy.

With a touch of the offbeat about her and a throaty, contagious laugh, Kristy knows her wines as well as her whiskey and she’s a joy to be around (when she’s not off exploring the world and meeting the people in it). We tease her mercilessly about the fact that her official title is ‘Lady’. We’re considering printing on her business cards for a laugh.

Strategist

Shelley Crowe

Shelley is a Brand Strategist who is dedicated to helping growing businesses think bigger, increase efficiency and stretch their dollar further.

A classically trained strategic marketer Shelley has a decade and a half of experience working across big, market leading consumer and pharmaceutical brands. It in consumer goods, whilst working directly alongside the irrepressible owners of one of Australia’s most iconic foodie destinations, that a passion for building start-ups was born. It has lead Shelley to pivot her model and changed up her own ‘why’. Her personal mission is to reduce the start-up failure rate through the democratisation of quality, big-picture, strategic marketing.

Shelley now spend her days building the big brands of tomorrow.

With a passion for seeing small business owners dreams come true, Shelley is a start-ups dream consultant!

Digital Marketing Manager

Nina Canet

A Facebook Ads ninja, Nina has close to 2 decades experience in media, marketing & entrepreneurship. A digital marketing machine additionally skilled in CRM, SEO, SEM, PPC, email automation & website analytics, Nina has the unique ability to cut through the techy jargon and get to the heart of her clients marketing objectives. One part killer copywriter, one part data geek with a dash of visual storyteller thrown in for good measure, Nina crafts lead generation campaigns that convert and convert.

The former founder and director of Spanish street music publication, Go Magazine, she’s so deeply Barcelona she’s guaranteed to make you feel uncoordinated & uncool on sight (but she’s way too lovely to notice).

Account Manager

Heather Cox

The Account Manager you always dreamed of, Heather’s role is specifically to represent the client’s interests within TBA. Steeped in our brand values of gratitude, service and hard work, we suspend Heather’s email access when she goes on holiday, such is her commitment to follow through.

Before TBA, Heather spent more than a decade in marketing, commercial, and relationship management roles in telecommunications retailer and supplier environments giving her a broad range of experience across the marketing mix.

A social media tragic and on-the-side content curator, Heather is a natural copywriter. Like all the best Australians, she’s an import from across the ditch.

Often found pounding the pavement and practising her Italian in Five Dock, Heather knows her Cannoli from her Cannelloni and is subsequently very, very popular in the office at lunchtime.

Madeline McMahon

Graphic Designer

Madeline McMahon

Graphic Designer

Utilising her own unique modern, minimalist aesthetic Madeline is adept at turning our client’s visions into the sort of design that isn’t just beautiful – it’s usable. Working on everything from logos, illustrations, web design, packaging, digital & print Madeline is the yin to our copywriter’s yang, bringing personality filled brands to life creatively, consistently and professionally. A shiny haired 20 something who likes to travel to peaceful places in far off lands, the team love to tell her horrifying stories about children & mortgages for kicks.

Huw Griffiths

Google Adwords Manager

Huw Griffiths

Google Adwords Manager

One of the most senior digital marketers in Sydney, Huw Griffiths is a man in demand.

A former hedge fund administrator & wine maker Huw has been in the SEM game since 2010, making him positively ancient in digital marketing years. His experience shows in his approach and most importantly, in his results.

All of us at TBA have got a terrible Google Adwords story to tell from our previous roles, as have many of our clients. Huw’s hit rate bringing in high value leads at way below budget makes us wonder if it’s not his ‘analytical & logical thinking, digital expertise & communications skills’ as claimed but rather some sort of juju magic.